In our co-pending application number 9116478 there is disclosed an ultrasonic transducer array for use in visualising the internal organs of the human body, for example in a system as disclosed in our UK Patents 2,212,267 and 2,233,094. As explained in our earlier co-pending application number 9116478 there are considerable problems to overcome in manufacturing such a transducer array because of its extremely small size.
A method of manufacture disclosed in our above mentioned co-pending application number 9116478 gives a high performance ultrasonic transducer but it is relatively expensive to manufacture. There are other advantages to this method of manufacture, relating to i) the ability to have well-designed acoustic layers, ii) the removal of the need to have a rigid (tungsten carbide) support and iii) the concomitant increase in backing layer thickness.